Foreign born employment up 1,028,000. Native employment down780,000

Monthly U.S. Worker Displacement Report

October 3, 2014

Mike Scruggs

Edwin S. Rubenstein, President of ESR (Economic) Research, reveals some employment statics each month that you probably won’t see in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or your local newspaper. In fact, you probably won’t even see them in the Wall Street Journal.

Mainstream media and many bank economists are chattering about what a good month September was. Jobs were up 236,000, or 0.167 percent, and the official U-3 unemployment rate is down to 5.9 percent.  

That sounds great on the surface, but inside they are actually alarming. Rubenstein breaks the numbers down into native born employment and foreign born employment. For September, foreign born employment rose a whopping 369,000 or 1.52 percent. Native born employment actually dropped 137,000 or -0.11 percent.

The difference between native and foreign born employment in the last two months, August and September, is shocking. The net gain was 248,000, but foreign born employment was up 1,028,000 or 4.32 percent, while native employment dropped 780,000 or -0.6 percent  

Since January 2009 (Obama inauguration) foreign born employment has increased 3,314,000 or 15.1 percent, while native born employment increased by 1,065,000, slightly less than 1.0 percent.

Do you wonder what is going on here?  Who loses? Who gains? What further consequences will there be? Who wants to hide it and why? 

Foreign born employment is rising sharply, and U.S. workers are being displaced. This same rise in cheap foreign labor is also driving incomes down for native born workers, whose wages are close to $2,800 lower per year (my computation using Borjas data and U.S. BLS statistics) because of continuing waves of cheaper foreign labor.

All this is very alarming and bodes ill for real per capita growth in the economy. Importing cheap foreign labor also increases the welfare burden on taxpayers. 

Do you think Congress and State Legislators should be concerned about American worker displacements and declining wages? Do think voters should be concerned?